Posted on 02/04/2010 10:41:38 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
On Wednesday, President Obama had something of a Howard Beale moment. Speaking to a group of Democratic senators, the President exhorted his listeners -- and, by extension, all Americans -- to break the cable news habit.
"If everybody here turned off your CNN, your Fox, just turn off the TV, MSNBC, blogs, and just go talk to folks out there, instead of being in this echo chamber where the topic is constantly politics," Obama said, things would be an awful lot better in Washington.
His appeal threatened to alienate some of his loyal supporters in the media -- MSNBC actually cut away from his remarks shortly after, with a nervous joke -- but it was dead on target.
How Cable Stole Our Brains
I've been covering the media business for a decade. Setting aside the Internet -- a big thing to set aside, I know, but hang with me for a minute -- the two biggest developments over that time have been the decline of newspapers and the growth of cable news. According to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Americans have been steadily getting more of their news from cable and ever less of it from papers. It doesn't take a genius to see the connection.
It used to be that cable-news viewers faced a simple choice: CNN, if you wanted your news straightforward and boring; Fox News, if you wanted to watch middle-aged white men shouting. Then MSNBC discovered its niche as the left-wing equivalent of Fox, and Headline News became HLN and started rivaling sister network CNN in the ratings.
The proliferation of options has brought with it an explosion of arguments and value judgments. Is MSNBC as far to the left as Fox is to the right? Is Fox's straight-news reporting affected by its opinion programming? Does the fact that Fox is now the most trusted cable-news network mean what it seems to? Does the fact that CNN's audience is heavily Democratic belie its claim to be nonpartisan?
Why None of It Matters
The answer to all these questions is: It doesn't matter. It doesn't really matter whether Bill O'Reilly or Keith Olbermann is the bigger blowhard, or whether Shepard Smith is less biased than Wolf Blitzer. The fact is, if you're getting your news from cable, you're getting misinformed. You're being told things are important that aren't. You're getting a diet of stories selected primarily for their strong visuals and sensationalistic details, not for their news value. You're watching a lot of split-screen shots of people talking over each other so loudly that none can be understood.
In short: If you watch a great deal of cable news, you are making yourself stupider. Put down the remote control. Pick up a newspaper. You may not have that luxury much longer.
At least we can pronounce “corpsman”.
Things would be better in WASHINGTON if the rest of us stopped watching cable news? Clearly a statement absolving himself of any responsibility for what's going on there.
This ‘re-awakening’ of Patriots is really sort of a barrier to his goals isn't it?
That's the least effective, least informative, least watchable, least intelligent, and most irritating form of interviewing.
If a Republican had said this, Olbermann would be calling them the “Worst Person in the World”. Not to mention all the tuts about how anti-intellectual we are for demanding that people turn off tv news.
And yet they all were averse to having town hall meetings with their constituents this past summer.
In other words, you're already stupid...
Translation...do not watch Glenn Beck. He is exposing our communist plot to destroy the evil White Capitalists.
The Friday night news dump is gonna be Hugh!
Wasn’t Arnold the name of the pig on Petticoat Junction?
just tune into government TV/radio and we’ll tell you all you NEED to know
FUBO!
LLS
*******
Obama is too funny.
You see, Obama conveniently forgets that if the public had stopped watching cable shows like CNN, FOXNEWS, and MSNBC BEFORE and during the 2008 presidential campaign, then Obama would NOT have been been the Democratic Party nominee, because many voters would NOT have bothered to go out of their way to learn about this state senator/ community organizer from Illinois, who was raised in Hawaii.
That is, many voters learned a lot about Obama from these same cable stations that Obama now tells us to avoid.
Poor Obama. He can be so funny sometimes.
OK Mr. Prez. I’m turning off ABC ,, CBS,, MSNBC,, CNN,, etc. From now on I’m only going to watch one hour of TV a day and when making the chose between watching y0u and the second most popular personality on the tube today ,,,, BECK WINS !!!!
You Mr. Prez. are the least experenced person in any room you’re in ,,, and it shows BIG TIME !!!!
“President Obama Says Stop Watching Cable News. And He’s Right [Dear Leader Commands You!!]”
So I guess cable news ratings will go through the roof now?
Honestly, I thought this came from the Onion.
CNN? Is our Dear Reader so arrogant he actually bit the hand that feeds him?
He's self destructing before our very eyes and I love it.
sw
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